A fantastic colour job at Gatsby & Miller, Amersham

It’s been a while since the Muddy barnet was tamed, and who better to Scissorhand it into shape than Gatsby & Miller, winners of the Muddy Award for Best Salon earlier this year?

This Amersham-based salon has been around since 2011 but it’s clearly hit its stride over the last year – hot on the heels of the Muddies has come the Salon Business Award for Ultimate Large Salon of the Year 2016, so bravo them, and on my experience here it’s clearly well-deserved.

The shop is in the centre of the new town, with parking a skip just around the corner (or, right down the end of the road, right turn, right turn and some bizarre private car park which is where I ended up but then, you’re not as stupid as me), and you’re next to a decent cafe, down the road from the lovely Heidi & Hudson for fash requirements, and across from Saint Waitrose and WH Smith for life’s more pleasurable essentials.

So the basics. Gatsby & Miler is a fairly compact salon, but it’s bright and airy salon with floor to ceiling glass and a functional, shiny, typically hairdressery stylish interior.

The style director here is Julie Church, a Wella Professionals Master Colour Expert (the ultimate technical colour qualification – check if your current colourist is one) who also cuts. I can never decide if I like that combined approach more than two separate experts concentrating on cut or colour. They both have their benefits, but I do think that one particularly good thing about having one person do both is that you don’t do that daft British thing pretending you love your colour just because it’s less awkward to do that than calling back the colourist who is now arm deep in peroxide with the next client and not interested in you any more. If your colourist is your cutter, clearly there’s a less painful ‘er, well, is it possible…?’ conversation that can take place naturally.

No need for that buttock-clenching exchange here though because I really, really loved the colour. I have dark brown hair that is now riddled with little grey wrigglers at the temples, but the thing with colouring them over is that if you don’t add any nuance of shade my hair can end up looking like a chocolate helmet. So Julie put some lighter tones through, not to be too summery about it (for have you noticed, it’s bloody freezing suddenly and we’re on the way to C-mas) but to give it some light and shade without blondising my preferred darker colouring.

First though was the Olaplex treatment. Whoever invented Olaplex is probably laughing on a private Caribbean island by now, playing with her split ends (because who cares about fraying when you’re that rich?). Just about every salon offers Olaplex but it’s so worth doing, even at £30 a pop, because it does something technical to your hair that suddenly makes it a zillion times softer.

A reader came up to me the other day and said how brave I was to put pictures of myself in various states of disarray in my salon reviews – a euphemism if ever I heard one! – so here goes again. Don’t judge me, it’s beyond me to pull off a glamorous foil shot, particularly with protective cream across my temples.

The cut, as usual with me, is a bit of a knock-into-shaper, particuarly around the fringe.

But I’m totally digging my colour – I took this snap in the sunlight when I got home so you can see the highlights.

Prices are reasonable here – cuts start at £38 for a stylist ising to £61 to be Julied (yes, it’s a word). Flash foils (up to 10) costs between £20-£28, a semi-permanent gloss is £31-56, and permanent tint is between £78-£100. At the mo you can get 25% off both cuts and colour for a first visit, which is a discount worth having, and you can make it a family affair – there’s a barber there who is also offering 25% off first cuts. Even better, if you know someone who has their hair cut here, get them to recommend you and you’ll get 50% off (and so will they for their next cut). I’m wondering if Gatsby & Miller’s do mortgages, I’d save a fortune. In the meantime, give them a whirl if you’re in the vicinity – I came out with one of the best cuts and colours I’ve had in ages.